Good job, Dean! Mine's earning a paltry 1.something in Marcus. Now, I'm not interested in this thread becoming another 'shares to watch' thread, so I'll ask only a simple question. Well, two. 1. Which tracing platform are you using, and 2. Do you take tips from anywhere in particular or are you spending time doing your own meticulous research / focusing on industries you already understand, etc?
Been using IG Index with 2 x Investment ISA account one each for me and my wife. So all profits tax free and building up the pot. I find the IG platform really easy to use and the web app works well also. I pay nothing per month for anything IG related and trades are £3 each for me.
I pay £25 per month for a Stockpedia subscription that was mainly to manage the portfolios and record trades. It is so easy and really good. So much better than your own Excel sheet. I tried loads of stuff like MS Money and many many others. Also many web/cloud options. Stockpedia was the best I found. Is nice and slick and works well. Very happy with it. it also has a ton of other useful info, tool, data on their as well to analyse any stock Also plenty of value added stuff such as e-mail daily reports etc. that are useful.
I also have an ADVFN silver subscription @ £17.37 per month also another £6 per month for their mobile add on. Give me access to live trade data both desktop and mobile. The IG Index platform gives me their free L2 Dealer windows application that is wasted on me a little and more than I need but gives me some live L2 data to see the order book in waiting. Both of these tools just allow you to get a feel if the market is waiting to buy or sell and the current bias. Just helps to gauge momentum as to when to enter or when to exit.
I have still made tons of mistakes on what stocks to buy/sell, when to enter/exit and could easily have doubled my profit with better decisions. Nobody not even the pros get it perfect of course but with a little improvement in my decisions there is much more meat on the bone than I have achieved.
I am interested in the markets anyway and always have been. I also feel it is good to know what is going on to position the business and personal setups in the right ballparks to lessen exposure or increase exposure as required. There is a Whatsapp group that has been started in which I input my thoughts, my ideas and my trades. There are many other like minded people on the group all feeding ideas, info and trades to mean we are working together more than individually.
You could EASILY spend 8 hours a day 5 days a week on research and picking trades and then some. The more you put in you should get more out but you can spend not a lot of time at all and just do a few trades and still make some cash. In essence though you can decide how much cash you want to use, how much time you want to spend and how much you want to make out of it. If you aren't too active and let trades breath and run not monitoring it too much these seem the better trades. Just pick a stock, with entry and an exit that achieves your desired profit and you can even automate the trades with triggered buys/sells.
I did a fair bit of trading part time in the background to my day job 15 years ago but focused on the business more for last 10 years so stuck it on the back burner. I could easily do this full time when I retire and get old. It isn't a bad way to earn some cash if you know a tiny bit about what you are doing.
Some food for though maybe.
#manmaths101
